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I do adore when issues of real life show up on the page.  I didn’t realize gentrification was a part of Alyssa Cole’s When No One is Watching when it was selected for Virtual Book Club’s discussion on Friday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m. CST for those who sign up here, but I’m even more excited now.  As my community is discussing how to develop land that was farmed for generations but now being sold off (mostly to developers), the for sale signs and condos popping up along with a walking tour seems also very real.  Will this book help me be able to verbalize my feelings about these issues?  We’ll see, but it’ll be a fun ride regardless, and we do so hope you’ll join us!

It’s confession time darling readers!  I started this book remembering nothing about our titular character beyond her facilitating Thesus’s escape (that part I had down), and him being a jerk after (with no details).  Perhaps it’s a wonder I remembered that much from middle school, or perhaps I should have asked my dear friend Google before I started.  I’m sure Ashley will have feelings and let me know.  Regardless, I’m not sad I just dove into this stunning debut with only a partial memory of the original myth. 

Ariadne is one of many recent books looking at the ancient myths from the perspectives of someone other than the (male) hero.  Madeline Miller has two amazing examples of that and we covered more last year in our Mythology month as well.  What I find particularly compelling about Ariadne is that she knows from the start the patriarchy is out to use her, and so are the gods.  Both men and gods are all about how women can serve their ends without any consideration of their personage.  And in both cases, women are at the mercy of others for their well-being, and their freedom.  Ariadne and her little sister, Phaedra, both tell their stories in this book, from the birth of the Minotaur through the end.  These two women experience so much that feels so familiar to me and women I love and it’s heartbreaking to see how the only noticeable progress has been in the last century or so.  And yet, I’m so delighted to have been reading this title on International Women’s Day.

According to Jennifer Saint, Ariadne is a novel “with sisterhood at its core” and while I agree, I think it’s broader than indicated.  I think it’s the sisterhood of all women who are treated as only pawns in the games of men and gods.  While Ariadne and Phaedra are without a doubt the central figures, who are so similar and yet so different, there are also their mother Pasiphae, the maenads of Dionysus, and other women of mythology whose stories Ariadne uses to make her point of the plight of women and her desire to simply be treated as a full person.   

I don’t know that I’ll reread Ariadne because, well written as it is, I need stories of women making someone else pay the price, which isn’t easily found in the ancient myths of Greece and Rome, even when they’re told from the woman’s perspective.  I will be looking out for more from Jennifer Saint, just as I will be looking out for more retellings that take a new perspective on these familiar tales.  I’m giving Ariadne 3.5 stars and rounding up to 4.  The story is so well done, but there were a couple of places where I wanted more on the page.  If you’re interested in mythology, retellings, or tales of strong women fighting the good fight, Ariadne earns her place on your TBR list.  

What’s a book whose theme spoke to you across time and space?

~Nikki 

Y’all know that the real and true reason we have a themed month for Mythology is because I’m obsessed and this is a way to knock out a goodly portion of my TBR. To let my demons run free, so to speak, and into the wild to be shared with the world. I feel like those are the same reasons why Jennifer Saint wrote Ariadne, her debut novel. And, it’s probably the same reason why Elektra is scheduled for release in early May of this year. I say ‘feel’ and ‘probably’ when I am 95% sure that’s the reason because her biography says she was obsessed with Greek mythology as a child. She spent 13 years as a high school English teacher but is now a full time writer who lives in Yorkshire, England with her husband and two children. 

There’s this thing about Mythology, especially that of the ancient Greek and Roman variety,  that the stories were first told orally so that now all we have left are some dead white dude’s interpretations of the tales. Dead white dude authors work for the Classics, obviously, and we try to bring you a spectrum of mythologies but that’s not what we’re talking about today. There are eleven dead white men who mention Ariadne, and each of them gives differing and sometimes conflicting details about her life. Most often she is a princess, daughter of King Minos of Crete. Sometimes just the wife of Dionysus, sometimes the means by which Theseus defeats the Minotaur, and sometimes THEN becomes the wife of Dionysus. It’s truly no surprise that Nikki doesn’t remember anything except Minotaur, Labyrinth, and Theseus being a d… typical male of his time…. But, Saint takes all these details and then some to tell a cohesive tale using multiple ancient sources. Truly, it is something I had wanted to do since college, and moved a Classical library’s worth of translated sources around so that one day I could tell the tales of the women barely mentioned in the myths but so pivotal to the plots. I digress, but it’s important to note I do not have those books any longer because I decided if I needed them in the future I can get them from my library (or open source on the internet). 

It’s hard to ‘avoid spoilers’ in a story that has been around for literally thousands of years, but I also realize that the majority of people reading this blog have not been mythology obsessed since high school so I’m going to avoid discussing plot. But, wikipedia is also linked above and gives a pretty good synopsis of what’s gonna happen. Saint just puts us into the minds and hearts of Ariadne and Phaedra – both sister’s stories are told in first person narration. Their experiences from their family of origin, how those traumas (hello their demigoddess mother rutted with a holy bull to conceive their half-brother the Minotaur) formed their view of the world and the desires for their lives. Each sister achieves the life she voices dreaming of as a child, but neither of their lives’ outcomes are as they had expected. And, isn’t that what happens to many women? That we are given or create these narrative stories of wanting our lives to be a certain way, find a way to create it, then years down the line realize there are missed expectations and things we never realized could happen or things that have changed even though the relationship seems to check all the boxes we had desired from the beginning. I got a little heavy there but it doesn’t mean it’s not true of us and it was certainly true of Ariadne. 

I, like Nikki, was reading this 4 star reviewed book on International Women’s Day (March 8th every year!). I’m glad that I was reintroduced to Ariadne’s and Phaedra’s characters and involvement in Greek mythology, and can’t wait to dig into Saint’s tale of Elektra, daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon when it arrives on my holds list later this spring.

Do you ever realize that you once had a dream or goal that someone else has come to birth into the world and you love that they did it, like they had done it just for you?

~Ashley

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